Speaker 1: Kiota.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. The government's
Speaker 2: being urged to create a new ministerial portfolio to focus
Speaker 2: solely on organized crime. It's the number one threat to
Speaker 2: our national security and as such there should be a
Speaker 2: government minister put in charge of tackling it. And that's
Speaker 2: according to a report from experts advising the Coalition. In
Speaker 2: recent years there have been record busts at the border
Speaker 2: as global crime syndicates, including Mexican cartels and outlaw biking
Speaker 2: gangs have targeted New Zealand as a small but lucrative market.
Speaker 2: So why are we losing the fight against drugs and
Speaker 2: organized crime? And what can be done to give us
Speaker 2: a better shot at tackling the issue. Today on the
Speaker 2: Front Page, the Advisory Groups chairman and Meredith Connell Criminal
Speaker 2: Prosecutor Steve Simon is with us to discuss how New
Speaker 2: Zealand might appoint a minister of mafia's so Steve. This
Speaker 2: Ministerial Advisory Group was appointed by Cabinet back in February
Speaker 2: to give government advice about how to overhaul the ways
Speaker 2: in which law enforcement and regulatory agencies can work together
Speaker 2: in this space. Tell me how has that process been.
Speaker 3: It's been especially been quite an exciting process. I've been
Speaker 3: a Crown prosecutor at Meredith Connell for twenty years and
Speaker 3: so during that time I've done some very serious cases
Speaker 3: for the police, and then I migrated to doing lots
Speaker 3: of serious cases for different government departments, and during that
Speaker 3: time I saw a lot of frustrations that they were
Speaker 3: in the covet agencies of could we do more. So
Speaker 3: it's actually been quite invigorating to be part of a
Speaker 3: group that's just there to finances and I've got a
Speaker 3: really good committee, really good crew. We have robust arguments
Speaker 3: trying to get to the best outcome we can and
Speaker 3: it's been really good so far. We are at this
Speaker 3: precipice where we've been doing these monthly reports and we're
Speaker 3: about to finish our final report for September and then
Speaker 3: we'll be in the hands of the government to see
Speaker 3: what they do with that. But we are hopeful because
Speaker 3: the support we've had indicates that the government is interested
Speaker 3: in being tough on crime, and particularly tough on organized crime.
Speaker 3: So we're hopeful that all of our hard work will
Speaker 3: pay off.
Speaker 2: And what have some of those discussions been around. What
Speaker 2: are some of the themes over the last nearly a year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what we were asked to do was to say, look,
Speaker 3: organized crime is a big issue, and it's a big
Speaker 3: issue now already in New Zealand. But if we look
Speaker 3: even across to Australia and see where they are at now,
Speaker 3: that kind of the ghost of Christmas future for us.
Speaker 3: We can see where it's going to go. And unfortunately
Speaker 3: it's a pretty bad picture. Not through anything that New
Speaker 3: Zealanders are doing. It's just we are an environment where
Speaker 3: we've got a pretty good economy and we are prepared
Speaker 3: to pay high prices for things like drugs. We are
Speaker 3: vulnerable to things like fraud and so we're a risky market.
Speaker 3: And so what we've tried to do is in these
Speaker 3: monthly reports kind of break the subject up. And so
Speaker 3: our first report was trying to identify how bad the
Speaker 3: problem is and so that for you know, your listeners,
Speaker 3: your watchers, they could see what we mean when we
Speaker 3: say organized crime, not just guys riding around on motorbikes,
Speaker 3: but large or international, almost corporatized organized crime. Our next
Speaker 3: report in April looked at chasing the money, and so
Speaker 3: I'm very grateful that one of our committee members is
Speaker 3: Craig Hamilton, who is a former police officer who knows
Speaker 3: everything you need to know about organized crime and relation
Speaker 3: to money laundering and proceeds. He helped us with that,
Speaker 3: and then in May we looked at We've looked at
Speaker 3: the role of corruption that being a growing theme. We've
Speaker 3: looked at the community, We've looked at information sharing, and
Speaker 3: we're just about to reach this report which is about accountability.
Speaker 2: How bad is the problem? Can you quantify it?
Speaker 3: A very good question. No, we can't, and the reason
Speaker 3: we can't is because part of our problem has been
Speaker 3: although we've recognized organized crime as a problem for New
Speaker 3: Zealand and we'll get worse, our difficulty has been we
Speaker 3: don't really have metrics. Right. So, in the same way
Speaker 3: I could tell you a by the health system by
Speaker 3: how long it takes some to get through accident an emergency,
Speaker 3: or how are my kids are doing at school based
Speaker 3: on how they're grading is and how that meets against
Speaker 3: national standards, we don't have the same kind of metrics
Speaker 3: in relation to organized crime and what we see from
Speaker 3: international experiences. We really need to have that. We currently
Speaker 3: have our wastewater testing, which does not paint a good picture.
Speaker 3: You know, we saw its spike last year and effectively
Speaker 3: double yeah, and so and it's doubled and it hasn't reduced,
Speaker 3: its flat lined, and so we're now it seems consuming
Speaker 3: twice as much meth and feto men as we were
Speaker 3: last year, which is incredibly troubling. So what we see
Speaker 3: is we don't have enough metrics to know exactly how
Speaker 3: bad the problem is, except when you talk to enforcement agencies,
Speaker 3: they will tell you it's bad.
Speaker 2: Well, police and customers a routinely intercept massive amounts of
Speaker 2: drugs at the border. We're talking hundreds of kilos at
Speaker 2: the border. And I spoke to Harold senior reporter Jared
Speaker 2: Savage actually about this subject.
Speaker 4: Fifteen nine years ago, you know, one kilo of myth
Speaker 4: was a big deal, and I was a front page story,
Speaker 4: and you know, like literally a front bach story. And
Speaker 4: these days, you know, even the smallest of drug dealers
Speaker 4: we have far more than a kilo in the back
Speaker 4: of the car. We're talking imports of four or five, six,
Speaker 4: seven hundred kilograms.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm showing my age, but I've been around as
Speaker 3: a prosecutor since some of the first intercepted drug cases
Speaker 3: and we were talking, you know, less than a kilogram
Speaker 3: of methamphetamine, whereas now on the bus we're talking about
Speaker 3: in the hundreds of kilograms of methamphetamine. And Jared Savage,
Speaker 3: to show his age, has also been around on those
Speaker 3: same cases. It's interesting you look at his latest book
Speaker 3: and it's interesting for me reading through it because it
Speaker 3: reads more like a yearbook than it does work of fiction.
Speaker 3: But what's troubling about that is these are all true cases.
Speaker 3: This is what is going on in New Zealand's environment,
Speaker 3: and we are seeing this real kind of narco's approach
Speaker 3: to organized crime in New Zealand.
Speaker 1: We as a government, we've done a lot of work
Speaker 1: around public facing stuff that people see, the game patches,
Speaker 1: the sentence saying but this is what's in behind driving
Speaker 1: this prime trend that we need to get on top of.
Speaker 1: And the first part is building at public awareness. It's
Speaker 1: about a step change in the way we approach. We
Speaker 1: have always operated in silos and our enforcement agencies we
Speaker 1: work cooperatively at the ground level. We hadn't been very
Speaker 1: good at a high level, allowing these leavers to be polls.
Speaker 2: So in the report, the latest one, you said, people
Speaker 2: across a range of sectors, industries and roles are working
Speaker 2: hard to play that part, but the system is not
Speaker 2: optimizing their work in a way that it should tell
Speaker 2: me a bit more about about that.
Speaker 3: As a starter, we should say we've got good people
Speaker 3: in New Zealand. And it's one of the things you
Speaker 3: see when you go over and see other countries, see
Speaker 3: how they're struggling, and you come back and by and
Speaker 3: large we've got really credible people, hard working, really passionate staff,
Speaker 3: and our police force and all of our enforcement agencies.
Speaker 3: I've worked with a number of those people over the years.
Speaker 3: The difficulty that we've got is it's kind of it's siloed,
Speaker 3: and so we'll have the police have got a huge
Speaker 3: variety of work to look at, you know, from domestic
Speaker 3: violence through to organized crime, through frauds, through a variety
Speaker 3: of different sectors. So it's very hard for them to
Speaker 3: target the organized crime piece alone, even more so when
Speaker 3: they need to rely upon other agencies to help them.
Speaker 3: A good example is perhaps mb MB is a large
Speaker 3: government organization which has got multifaceted their core business objective
Speaker 3: for the last few years has been to be the
Speaker 3: easiest place in the world to do business, which is
Speaker 3: great and we do want that because we want our
Speaker 3: economy to thrive. At the same time, our transnational organized
Speaker 3: crime strategy was to be the hardest place in the
Speaker 3: world for organized crime to do business. So you can
Speaker 3: see the tension for them in terms of how they
Speaker 3: play their role in supporting police and customs and other
Speaker 3: agencies to target organized crime. And so what we've said is, look,
Speaker 3: we need to rather than have this split over a
Speaker 3: variety of different ministers, we need this to be brought
Speaker 3: under one organized crime minister. One minister is responsible both
Speaker 3: to Cabinet for this response but also to the public.
Speaker 3: So when your listeners, your watchers come and say, well,
Speaker 3: who can we.
Speaker 2: Look to us, where does the buck stop?
Speaker 3: Where does the buck stop? We have one minister to
Speaker 3: answer that question and then supported so that that minister
Speaker 3: can get answers and results from those different agencies. We
Speaker 3: still want the police to police, we still want customs
Speaker 3: to do their job, we still want mb to do
Speaker 3: their job, and we can say the same with all
Speaker 3: the agencies. We just need them to have some support
Speaker 3: to make sure that they're doing the best job they can.
Speaker 3: So collectively, as a team, we can be fighting organized crime.
Speaker 2: And what might that ministry look like and how might
Speaker 2: it operate?
Speaker 3: Well, the first thing we've said is we want any
Speaker 3: We want the Minister to have responsibility for the organized
Speaker 3: the transnational series organized crime plan, so they're in charge
Speaker 3: of that.
Speaker 2: How about thirteen agencies involved in This is.
Speaker 3: About thirteen agencies and you can play a good pub
Speaker 3: quiz game of trying to figure out exactly who they are.
Speaker 3: And even amongst them, there's some that are split. You know.
Speaker 3: For an example, an MB Immigration has a really important
Speaker 3: role to play in terms of trying to address migrant exploitation.
Speaker 3: At the same time they have the company's office which
Speaker 3: can has been exploited sometimes for money laundering and the likes.
Speaker 3: So even within the ministries there's split functions and so
Speaker 3: you've got so many different people trying to respond to this.
Speaker 3: We're just trying to say, let's align all those us
Speaker 3: and put them in one place and the support that
Speaker 3: minister with a small team that can help. We don't
Speaker 3: want to recommend an agency, we don't want to recommend
Speaker 3: a department. They're not trending anyway, but I don't want
Speaker 3: to Our committee didn't want to recommend something that means
Speaker 3: in a year's time there'll be an office with another
Speaker 3: set of staff doing another set of things. We wanted
Speaker 3: to see results straight away. So we've said there should
Speaker 3: be a small elite team that helps that minister and
Speaker 3: really helps energize the agencies to do their job as
Speaker 3: best as they can.
Speaker 2: And I know that you've mentioned nor is it holding
Speaker 2: to account those who are not meeting expectations. So who
Speaker 2: are we talking about there and how do we hold
Speaker 2: people to account.
Speaker 3: What we've seen is there are some agencies doing an
Speaker 3: incredible job. Police Customs are doing an incredible job. Other
Speaker 3: agencies are not doing as good a job. And so
Speaker 3: our point is to say we should be in supporting
Speaker 3: and encouraging the great work we've got. We should really
Speaker 3: be putting our resources behind helping those initiatives, helping those
Speaker 3: who are trying to do their best with organized crime. Similarly,
Speaker 3: we need to say if people are not coming to
Speaker 3: the party and doing as much as they can, we
Speaker 3: need to look at that and say, are we best
Speaker 3: put our resources there or shall we give it to
Speaker 3: someone who will use it. But more fundamentally than that,
Speaker 3: what we've heard from these agencies is the guys at
Speaker 3: the front line are saying, it needs to be clear
Speaker 3: what you want us to do. And so what we've
Speaker 3: seid is when we have this organized Crime Minister and
Speaker 3: have this secretary to support staff to help them, we
Speaker 3: need to help the agencies with a work plan and
Speaker 3: much the same you would have in a business, working
Speaker 3: through what are our priorities, what are the things we
Speaker 3: can do? And so we want to create a shopping
Speaker 3: list for these agencies to say, what are all the
Speaker 3: things you could do to help the fight against organized crime,
Speaker 3: whether it's your agencies direct fight against crime or helping
Speaker 3: another agency. How can we provide you a list so
Speaker 3: you know what you've got to do and then when
Speaker 3: we work through the course of a year, we can
Speaker 3: see whether you've done it or not.
Speaker 2: And of course this problem hasn't just popped up overnight
Speaker 2: or over the last couple of years. Hey, I saw
Speaker 2: that there was an example given about the Organized and
Speaker 2: Financial Crime Agency of New Zealand and that was set
Speaker 2: up back in two thousand and eight, but that ended
Speaker 2: up being a little bit of a failure.
Speaker 3: It started off well, it had some good people on
Speaker 3: it had great intentions and was perhaps a symbol of
Speaker 3: how even at that stage kind of when methanphetamine was
Speaker 3: just really kicking off in New Zealand, we saw the
Speaker 3: issue and we saw we needed to get on top
Speaker 3: of it, but it kind of fell apart. It fell
Speaker 3: apart through a lack of leadership, a lack of resources.
Speaker 3: And what that illustrates. The lessons there for us are
Speaker 3: one to say, look, we've had to go at it,
Speaker 3: then it hasn't worked. What lessons can we learn from that? Now?
Speaker 3: What we know is we have to have very strong leadership.
Speaker 3: So whoever the minister is, if the government accepts our recommendation,
Speaker 3: whoever the minister is, will need to be strong, will
Speaker 3: need to be bold. The support team that they have
Speaker 3: will need to be bold. And what we need to
Speaker 3: do is have followed through. They will need to have
Speaker 3: resources to help them achieve what they need to achieve,
Speaker 3: and we need to have them be accountable themselves. We're
Speaker 3: proposing things like this minister should stand in front of
Speaker 3: the government instead of standing in front of Cabinet every
Speaker 3: year with a report explaining where we're at in our
Speaker 3: fight against organized crime. We've been doing these monthly reports.
Speaker 3: We were coming out doing this talking to the public,
Speaker 3: and we're saying we should have more of that. The
Speaker 3: public is desperate to know what we are doing in
Speaker 3: this fight against organized crime. We feel like they should.
Speaker 2: Know well because it is a fight that we are
Speaker 2: essentially losing at the moment.
Speaker 3: We are and that's not through lack of hard work
Speaker 3: and great energy. It's just that the problem that is
Speaker 3: coming to us from overseas is so significant. We're seeing
Speaker 3: the scale of drug production overseas is overwhelming. Now. Whereas
Speaker 3: we once saw small methamphetamine labs happening in New Zealand,
Speaker 3: we're seeing large scale uber labs happening in South America
Speaker 3: and in Asia, and those drugs are coming to New Zealand.
Speaker 3: We're seeing fraud, not being some Nigerian prince calling you
Speaker 3: to ask you for your bank account, but large scale
Speaker 3: schemes where they're using AI to try and develop profiles
Speaker 3: so they can trick you into providing details. So the
Speaker 3: scale and complexity we're seeing now of organized crime is growing,
Speaker 3: and New Zealand, like other countries around the world, is
Speaker 3: falling victim to that, and so we're saying we really
Speaker 3: needed to take the fight to organized crime.
Speaker 2: Have you had any response from the government this far.
Speaker 3: Are The response so far has been really positive. I
Speaker 3: have to say Minister Costello, who is the Minister for
Speaker 3: Customs Associate Minister for Police, she's a former police officer
Speaker 3: and so when she was setting up our minister or
Speaker 3: advisory group, she was very clear to us to be bold.
Speaker 3: She was very clear to us that's not just rhetoric.
Speaker 3: She has through her time during the police and then
Speaker 3: her time as a private investigator scene how there's lots
Speaker 3: of promises are made but not much follow through and
Speaker 3: so for us, her point was you need to be
Speaker 3: very clear and come up with bold initiatives and then
Speaker 3: leave it for the government to push those through and
Speaker 3: see if we can support those. I've had great meetings
Speaker 3: with Minister Mitchell, I've had great meetings with Minister Goldsmith.
Speaker 3: I'm working my way around a number of the other ministers.
Speaker 3: They care and what has been really interesting for me
Speaker 3: is to see the passion with which they want to
Speaker 3: confront this problem. And what we're trying to do is
Speaker 3: create an opportunity to say in our September paper we
Speaker 3: will have the solution and what we're looking for is
Speaker 3: government getting behind that.
Speaker 2: Well, nothing gets more bold, I think than suggesting another
Speaker 2: ministerial portfolio. Hey, what do you reckon? The chances are
Speaker 2: by say this time next year, we will have a
Speaker 2: mafia minister or something so to speak.
Speaker 3: I'm optimistic and I think we could do variations of that.
Speaker 3: We could lose lesser degrees of that. You could take
Speaker 3: one of the existing portfolios, like the Police, like the
Speaker 3: Ministry of Justice and add on to those, but that
Speaker 3: would be ignoring the problem we see, which is we
Speaker 3: need one place to come to so we know who
Speaker 3: is accountable for this. And don't get me wrong, that
Speaker 3: will be a big task for that minister. There will
Speaker 3: be big issues for them to face now and in
Speaker 3: the future, and that's why it's going to have to
Speaker 3: be someone who's pretty robust.
Speaker 2: Do you see that responsibility lying upon someone like the
Speaker 2: police minister, because I know that. You know, in cabinet
Speaker 2: reshuffles past, oftentimes ministers do get multiple portfolios, sometimes ones
Speaker 2: that interconnect with each other. How important is it to
Speaker 2: keep the police minister and say a Minister for organized
Speaker 2: crime separate.
Speaker 3: I don't think that matters too much. As long as
Speaker 3: the minister who takes hold of this portfolio is bold,
Speaker 3: and as long as that minister understands the nature of
Speaker 3: the organized crime problem and is aware of what's happening
Speaker 3: overseas so they can see where it's trending as well,
Speaker 3: and so that we can make sure that we resource
Speaker 3: it properly. You will oftentimes see ministers hold a number
Speaker 3: of different portfolios. What we need now is someone bold.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Steve, You're welcome.
Speaker 3: Welcome.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at enzadherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
Speaker 2: produced by Jane Ye and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 2: our editor. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front Page
Speaker 2: on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune
Speaker 2: in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.